


a mild understanding of the parallels of irony

by statusquo_ergo



Series: a fire in the sage's mansion [11]
Category: Suits (US TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Fluff, M/M, Mike and Harvey are Associates, Pre-Season/Series 01
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-12-14
Updated: 2019-12-14
Packaged: 2021-02-25 22:48:35
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 10,802
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21793261
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/statusquo_ergo/pseuds/statusquo_ergo
Summary: None of the important things seem to happen on purpose.
Relationships: Mike Ross/Harvey Specter
Series: a fire in the sage's mansion [11]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/970797
Comments: 16
Kudos: 143





	a mild understanding of the parallels of irony

**Author's Note:**

> Prompt: I'm a different anon, but if you have the time can you write something with Mike and Harvey being associates at the same time? I wonder how the dynamics would be.

The first hint of daylight begins to pierce through the walls of windows lining the partners’ offices as Harvey ambles down the hall, closing his eyes against the glare and breathing in deep as though he can taste it, the start of a new day and everything that promises him. All of this will be his someday, someday soon; all his suffering, his trials and tribulations will be worth it in the end when he climbs to the top of the mountain, when he takes his rightful place on the throne. He’ll sit in one of these offices, the biggest one, and he’ll stack the bookcases with his records, he’ll line the shelves with basketballs and weird art because he’s a hotshot lawyer with connections to the biggest players in the game but he’s gotta keep everybody guessing, can’t let them get too comfortable. No one’s allowed to figure him all the way out.

Harvey stops outside the glass door of Daniel Hardman’s corner office and sighs.

One day.

Shaking his head, he picks himself back up and walks purposefully into the dim cavern of the bullpen, settling at his desk and grinning smugly at the five files in his inbox contrary to the fifteen in his outbox. The new class of associates is starting today; walking into the offices first thing in the morning to find him already ensconced in research or writing a brief or whatever it is he’s supposed to be taking care of for Jessica will probably scare the shit out of at least a few of them, and go a long way towards establishing his authority with the rest.

Harvey pulls the bottom file from his inbox and spreads the contents across his desk just as a knock sounds at the door.

“Hi, uh— Mike Ross.”

Well, shit.

Taking a moment to recover himself, Harvey plucks a pen from the box beside his monitor and looks up with the most baleful expression he can muster to find a scrawny kid standing in the doorway, clutching a peeling pleather briefcase to his chest and looking like he couldn’t have graduated high school more than about a week ago.

“Can I help you?” Harvey asks coolly.

Mike Ross smiles way too brightly for the first impression he’s just made and takes a few steps forward. “I’m Mike Ross,” he clarifies. “Junior Associate.”

Briefly surveying Mike’s ill-fitting black suit and absurdly hipster skinny tie, Harvey purses his lips and stops just short of tapping his pen against his desk. So much for Pearson Hardman’s stellar reputation in the legal community, then; it was nice while it lasted.

“So,” Mike stutters, his smile falling a little under the force of Harvey’s scrutiny, “uh, do I just…sit wherever, or…”

“If it’s empty, it’s yours,” Harvey says, pointedly shuffling the papers laid out before him. He’s only a little surprised when Mike takes the desk closest to the door rather than the one directly behind Harvey, but then again, maybe he just didn’t notice that it was free. It’s for the best, of course. Harvey is a busy guy, and he doesn’t need to spend his days sharing his space with some overachieving ideologue who probably won’t shut up about how awesome his life is and how honored he is to be working here or whatever.

“ _Shit._ ”

Or not.

Not that Harvey cares what Mike’s problem is, being that he’s a busy guy on his way to the top of the mountain and he absolutely does not give a single fuck about some greenhorn associate forgetting to bring his lucky bookmark or whatever into work for his first day in the big leagues.

No, really.

Call it a morbid curiosity.

“You kiss your mother with that mouth?”

Mike glares at him, and Harvey makes a note in the corner of the brief he’s reading.

“What’s the problem?”

Mike slams his shitty briefcase closed. “My roommate’s trying to be helpful,” he says, profoundly unhelpfully.

Arching his eyebrows, Harvey sets his pen down, folding his arms on top of his desk and watching him in silence until Mike huffs a sigh and shoves his hand into his hair.

“He stuck a dime bag in my briefcase.”

With friends like these, huh?

Affecting as much indifference as he can muster, Harvey turns to his computer and opens an empty Word document.

“Heroin or cocaine?”

‘What?” Mike looks up anxiously. “No, dude, it’s, it’s just pot, but you don’t understand, I _cannot_ lose this job.”

Harvey murmurs a sound that might, in other circumstances, be mistaken for empathy, but he’s reasonably sure will, at the moment, only serve to make Mike even more flustered.

“Don’t call me ‘dude.’”

Mike whimpers, and this is really starting to get pathetic.

“The access code to the partners’ bathroom is four-seven-three-two,” Harvey says. “Throw it out there, no one’ll think twice.”

Mike stares at him, wide-eyed and frozen in shock or wonder or something, and Harvey keeps his eyes on his computer screen.

“But— I—”

“Bathroom’s out in the hall,” he says. “Toward the elevators, take a left.”

“Yeah,” Mike stammers, fumbling with his briefcase. “Wow, uh, thank you so much.”

Because he is, by his nature, a tactician, Harvey waits until Mike has gathered his belongings and pocketed the illicit package before pointedly clearing his throat. Because he has been taught, by life in general, to press an advantage when it comes along, he offers a warning smile when Mike looks up with a spooked expression on his face.

“You realize, you owe me.”

Mike nods fervently.

“Yeah,” he says. “Sure, uh, whatever, whatever you want.”

And to think, this kid claims he’s a lawyer.

“Harvey,” Harvey says. “Harvey Specter.”

Still nodding distractedly, Mike takes one last look around the empty bullpen before he makes a break for it. Harvey smirks to himself as the door falls shut in his wake.

So this is going to be interesting.

\---

Wednesday morning, Mike shows up bright and early in a grey suit that fits him about as well as the black one he wore yesterday and sans the garbage briefcase, having replaced it with a Chrome Industries messenger bag that’s equally out of place in the office as the rest of him. Harvey busies himself with his files as it crosses his mind that the casual new bag is a much better fit for Mike as a person, and he must really be something if Jessica’s willing to let him skate on the company dress code like this.

Still, Harvey could probably teach him a thing or two.

\---

“Hey Harvey.”

For fuck’s sake, it’s not even seven o’clock yet. Harvey sighs through his teeth and closes his eyes tight.

“If you want to set up a meeting,” he says tersely, “call my secretary.”

Mike actually has the audacity to laugh at his request. “Associates don’t have secretaries.”

“This one does.”

Rather than run off in supplicating awe at Harvey’s preeminence, Mike drapes himself over the low partition of Harvey’s cubicle and grins at him. “Wow,” he marvels. “How’d you pull that one off?”

Harvey looks indignantly at the papers Mike’s very nearly dropped on his desk and that he probably came over here in the first place to ask Harvey to handle, for some stupid reason. As though he doesn’t work here too, the little punk.

“She’s a hell of a secretary.”

“Oh,” Mike says, “sure, I just figured it had something to do with you being a hell of an associate.”

Harvey smirk despite himself. “That too.”

“And as one hell of an associate,” Mike goes on, standing upright, “I bet it’ll take you about five seconds to proof this subpoena for me.”

Son of a bitch.

Harvey look down at the papers Mike holds out as though they’re crawling with some array of disease-ridden vermin.

“You don’t know how to fill out a subpoena?”

“Sure I do,” Mike says. “But it’s my first time, I figure someone ought to check my work.”

“I think you’re misunderstanding the situation,” Harvey says archly. “ _You_ owe _me_ for saving your ass, remember?”

Mike gets a speculative look on his face that Harvey doesn’t like the look of one bit.

“I mean, I know I owe you for helping me out,” he says, narrowing his eyes just a little. “But if you’re planning on telling any of the partners what happened and getting me fired, I could tell them that you knew about it, and that you facilitated the disposal, which, at best, makes you an accessory, and you’d probably get fired, too.”

Well, well, well. Where has this wily bastard been hiding?

Harvey leans back in his chair, holding his hand just a little bit out of Mike’s reach. “Alright, hand it over.”

“You’re the best,” Mike says brightly, leaning over to place the papers in his waiting palm.

“Don’t I know it,” Harvey murmurs, skimming the first page. Aside from the missing signature from the Board of Appeals, it actually looks pretty much perfect; well, it should be, the form is ridiculously straightforward. But still.

“I’ll have it back to you within the hour,” he says, dropping it on his desk and turning back to his computer as Mike’s lips quirk to hold back a grin.

“So in other words, it’s fine.”

Harvey bites down on a smile of his own.

“Whatever you say, rookie.”

\---

One afternoon, on a Friday of no particular note sometime in the middle of October, a little over a month after the latest class of associates arrived at the firm, Harvey accidentally finishes the last of the work the partners have assigned to him with nearly three hours still remaining in the workday. Opening a completed Word document in an effort to appear busy, just in case Louis decides to accuse him of not pulling his weight, Harvey settles back in his chair and looks past his monitor to the other associates milling about the bullpen: Louis is busy creeping on Eton—no surprises there—while Kline and McKinney each occupy themselves tending to the new associates they seem to have adopted, shoving papers in their faces and talking fervently.

At his desk in the corner, Mike hunches over a stack of papers with a mildly constipated look on his face, tapping his pen rhythmically against his keyboard and occasionally gnawing on his lower lip. Harvey smirks; if the poor kid’s already in over his head, a smart mouth and quick retorts aren’t going to be enough to save him, no matter how good he is at filling out forms.

Then Mike drops his forehead to his desk with an audible thud, and maybe Harvey ought to lend him a hand. For the extra leverage.

“So who spat in your grape juice this morning?”

Mike groans.

“Carson wants me to look over the last ten years of Boehringer Ingelheim’s annual reports and it’s like a _million pages long._ ”

Harvey scoffs. “Don’t you read a hundred thousand words per minute?”

“Twenty thousand,” Mike mumbles into his desk before he lifts his head back up and rubs his eyes. “But not when there are _diagrams_ in the _text._ ”

How pictures might make the process _slower_ is beyond him, but Harvey nods sympathetically and looks over Mike’s shoulder. Sure enough, the document is full of lazy clip art, and the text seems to be about half pompous rhetoric and half technical jargon, the latter being roughly half financial and half scientific; no wonder Mike is losing his poor little mind.

“When does he expect you to finish?”

Mike scratches his forehead. “EOD.”

“Shit, Mike, how long have you been putting this off?”

Mike looks at him churlishly. “I haven’t been putting it off,” he says. “He gave it to me this morning.”

Harvey frowns. The partners might be assholes, but even they can’t be stupid enough to hand out assignments like this one on such tight deadlines.

Wait a second.

Harvey glances around the bullpen, his scowl darkening. “Did you get this from Ernest Carson or Carson Kline?”

“Kline,” Mike says. “Why?”

That absolute _dick._

“Because it’s one thing for a partner to give you this kind of shit,” Harvey says, reaching around Mike to gather the papers up into a sloppy pile, “but it’s something else for you to get it from an associate.”

“No, Harvey, wait—”

Ignoring Mike’s well-meaning protest, Harvey stalks over to Kline’s desk and drops the stack of reports on his keyboard as Kline leaps up out of his chair and glares at him, his pet associate scurrying away.

“Hey, man,” he snaps, “what the fuck?”

“Funny,” Harvey retorts, “I was just about to ask you the same question.”

Kline’s eyes widen in bewilderment, and Harvey grits his teeth and reminds himself not to say anything he’ll regret.

“Look, you might’ve survived Harvard by taking credit for smarter people’s work,” he says, “but that’s not gonna help you here.”

Picking up the top page of the report, Kline skims it, his gaze darting to Mike and then back to Harvey.

“You saying I shouldn’t delegate to people who are better equipped to handle this kind of bullshit so I can make better use of my time?” he asks in a clumsy attempt at cleverness that makes Harvey’s stomach clench as he narrows his eyes until he can barely see.

“I’m saying if you don’t want Jessica Pearson to know who really wrote all the briefs for the Armogan case last year,” he says, “you’ll stay the _fuck_ away from Mike Ross.”

Kline opens his mouth to deliver some doubtlessly classless retort, but Harvey merely brushes past him, walking back to Mike’s desk and ignoring Kline’s stuttering in his wake.

“Any more associates try to pull something like that with you,” he says as Mike stares at him, “you come to me, got it?”

“Sure,” Mike says wonderingly. “But—why?”

Harvey thins his lips, his hands twitching. Because it’s not fair? Because I don’t want you to burn out? Because I saw you first?

Yeah, no.

“I can’t risk you being busy with some other associate’s bullshit when I need you,” he dismisses. “If I come calling, you’d better be ready to go.”

Mike grins. “Butch and Sundance, baby.”

Harvey pats the top of Mike’s partition and turns away. “Don’t get ahead of yourself.”

“I’m the Robin to your Batman!”

Waving vaguely, Harvey makes his way back to his own desk in silence. No sense in giving the kid an inflated sense of his own worth.

Not even if he might deserve it.

\---

“Harvey.”

Grinning his cockiest grin, Harvey drops the Lipinski briefs on Jessica’s desk and quirks his eyebrow. “You’re gonna kick their asses,” he says, and not only because he has to.

She looks up at him wryly, pressing her fingertip to the file and drawing it toward herself. “Yes,” she says, “I know. That’s not why I asked you to deliver these in person.”

No shit.

“So,” Harvey drawls, “to what do I owe the pleasure?”

Jessica leans back in her chair and folds her hands in her lap, fixing him with a calculating stare.

“One of your fellow associates filed a complaint against you.”

Tragic, but it was bound to happen eventually. Of course those competitive fuckers would be reduced to lying about him to knock him down a few pegs; frankly, it’s impressive they’ve lasted this long.

“So now it’s my fault they can’t keep up with their caseloads?”

“Apparently,” she carries on as though he hasn’t spoken, “according to this complaint, _you_ haven’t been keeping up with your caseload, either.”

He narrows his eyes, ignoring her implication that the complaint isn’t the first. “Bullshit.”

“You haven’t been outsourcing your work to one of the first years?”

Only technically. And only sort of.

“I’ve been working with him.”

“Mm-hm.” Tenting her fingers under her chin, she leans forward, resting her elbows on her desk. “You know, Harvey, you’ve only been here two years; if the workload is already getting to be too much, maybe I was a little hasty in bringing you back to the firm.”

Like hell she was, and she knows it. Harvey scowls deeply, his mind already racing with a myriad of plans to make Carson Kline’s life a living hell for at least the next year.

“It’s not like that.”

“Oh really.”

Yes, really. Kind of. Mostly.

“I’m mentoring him.”

She breathes out slowly, wearily. Every day in the life of Jessica Pearson is a long one.

“Which one is he?”

Harvey presses his lips together. There’s no harm in admitting this much, is there? They’ve already come this far, they might as well go another step further.

“Mike Ross.”

She closes her eyes. “Of course it is.”

And just what is that supposed to mean?

“I built you up into what you are today, Mister Specter,” she says, looking up at him. “Don’t forget that I can break you down just as easily.”

He nods carefully. “Of course.”

“Mm,” she murmurs. “Just make sure the two of you aren’t more trouble than you’re worth.”

Backing out of the room, he tosses her a two-fingered salute.

“You got it.”

She turns away from the door, shaking her head and massaging her fingers against her temples.

Yeah, well. She’s the one who hired them in the first place, she’s got no one to blame but herself.

So there.

\---

It’s become something of a game between the two of them, showing up first at the office every morning. There aren’t really any stakes to it; they’re not going to trash each other’s desks or anything, and Mike is too respectful of Harvey to prank him whereas Harvey considers himself to be above such childish pettiness. But the unspoken competition of it all keeps them both entertained for a few minutes each morning, and the routine is a nice sort of thing to rely on.

When Harvey arrives on Thursday morning to find the bullpen lights already on, he’s not even annoyed to have his twelve-day winning streak broken so much as amused at Mike’s determination. Except when he spies the garbage can in the break room overflowing with Red Bull cans, a thin residue of coffee left at the bottom of the pot, and a scattering of sugar packets as though someone reached for one in a hurry and didn’t have the wherewithal to clean up after himself, he has to wonder: Does it still count as showing up first if Mike never actually left?

Also, what the fuck is Mike the Speed-Reading Wunderkind doing pulling an all-nighter? If he’s taking on other associates’ caseloads in some misguided effort to “make friends,” he and Harvey are going to have to have a little chat about his priorities.

“Hey Deepneau,” Harvey says loudly, throwing the bullpen door open as Mike jumps in his seat, looking around wildly.

“Shit,” he mutters, pressing his palms his eyes. “What time is it?”

Harvey sheds his coat and arranges the files on his desk with a little frown on his face. “Six thirty,” he says. “What happened last night?”

“Mm.” Mike squeezes his eyes shut. “You know the Devlin McGregor case?”

“That girl suing for wrongful termination?” Harvey recalls. “What about it?”

Mike gestures vaguely to the mountain of paperwork covering his desk and the banker boxes shoved underneath. “This is… I dunno, a tenth of the paperwork they’re trying to drown Jessica in,” he says. “She asked me to help her out.”

“Shit.” Harvey walks over to get a better look; nearly every page he can see is covered in highlighter and pen annotations. “You got through all of this in one night?”

“What?” Mike blinks up at him. “No, yeah, uh, I did all of it, but…my desk is tiny. Most of it’s back in the file room. And I would’ve finished faster if I hadn’t stopped to order that pizza.”

A pizza.

Harvey picks up the nearest file and pretends to skim the first page as he tries to wrap his head around all of this.

Mike read, and annotated, approximately five million pages of discovery, and is probably going to hand Jessica a win on a silver platter, after _one night’s work,_ and the only reason he didn’t finish faster is that he had to stop to order a pizza.

A _pizza._

“How high are you?” Harvey asks as he sets the file back down.

Mike smirks up at him. “Not very.”

“Because I think I have to report you to HR.”

“Seriously, have you ever had cheese in the crust?”

“The cruel and unusual punishment of Mike Ross, courtesy of one Mike Ross.”

“Because it blew my _mind._ ”

Harvey bites down on a grin and cuffs him on the back of the head.

“Get back to work, you fucking degenerate.”

Mike’s next attempt at a smile is undercut by a massive yawn, but to his credit, he hurries to clamp his mouth shut, thumping his fists down on his desk and shaking his head.

“Yes,” he says firmly. “Right. I am at work. It is time for working. Do you want cold pizza for breakfast.”

Cocking his eyebrows, Harvey takes a second to figure out whether that was meant to be a question.

“What are you, a college dropout?” he needles as Mike looks up at him forlornly.

“But it blew my mind!”

Harvey shakes his head. The poor kid might be about to save Jessica’s ass, but he won’t be any good to anyone if he keeps going like this.

“Mailroom’s on the fourth floor,” he says. “They’ve got a break room with a couch, go take a nap before everyone else shows up.”

Mike frowns. “I can’t take a break, I have write up the…Debeque thing for Fogerty by nine.”

This fucking kid.

Sighing the wearied sigh of beleaguered mentors the world over, Harvey leans against Mike’s desk and glares into his eyes.

“You’ve been up for at thirty hours,” he says. “At _least._ You just saved Jessica about a week’s worth of work, and probably managed to pull her ass out of the fire while you were doing it. Nobody’s gonna fire you if you take a half hour to recharge. I won’t even tell on you.”

“But—”

“Jesus Christ, Mike,” Harvey interrupts, “you are dead on your feet. Do you have any idea how many mistakes you’re going to make if you try to write up Fogerty’s briefs right now? And do you know how bad it’ll make me look when he finds out I was here and I didn’t stop you?”

Mike blinks up at him.

“Very bad?”

Harvey drops his head and sighs again.

“Yes,” he says. “Very bad.”

Mike smiles weakly.

“Alright,” he says. “Fourth floor?”

Slapping him on the shoulder, Harvey steps back and nods. “Fourth floor. Be back here by seven, and I’d better not catch you sleeping on your keyboard this afternoon.”

“Fuck you, I’d be under my desk like a gentleman,” Mike retorts, hauling himself to his feet.

Harvey grins as Mike drags himself toward the door. “You know you owe me.”

Rubbing the back of his neck, Mike nods.

“Yeah, yeah.”

“I’m adding it to your tab.”

Mike laughs.

To be fair, Harvey probably wouldn’t have taken himself seriously, either.

\---

It’s not that Harvey doesn’t like Donna. He does, very much; she’s been with him for three years now, and she knows him better than just about anyone. He brought her along when he left the DA’s office and he pays half her salary out of his own goddamn pocket; he wouldn’t do that for any old subordinate. She’s basically his best friend, of course he likes her.

It’s just that as a reasonably sensible person, he’s also a little bit afraid of her, and the fact that she’s perched on the edge of his desk when he returns from lunch probably means she’s planning to murder someone, and he really hopes it’s not him.

Taking a deep breath, he sidles into his cubicle.

“Donna,” he says. “To what do I owe the pleasure?”

She turns to him with a grim expression that doesn’t do much to assuage his concerns. “What,” she retorts, “you think you’re the boss of me or something?”

“Well…”

She smirks. “I wanted to check out the baby sharks. And by the way,” she nods toward a group gathered in the corner of the room, “that one tried to hit on me as soon as I got here, but I’m going to give you the benefit of the doubt and assume that whichever one you adopted has a little more self-respect.”

Doing his best to convince himself that Mike wouldn’t do something like that—but wouldn’t he, though?—Harvey follows her eyeline to one of the new associates whose name he doesn’t know but who he recognizes as the little fucker who won’t shut up about having been his high school’s mock debate champion.

“Sounds about right,” he says. “So what brought on this sudden impulse?”

Tossing her hair over her shoulder, she crosses her ankles and raises her hand to examine her nails. “We all know you’re going to be running this place one day,” she says, “and at least one of us has to bother getting to know the commoners.”

“They’ve already been here eight months.”

“Exactly.” She narrows her eyes, lowering her head to survey the room. “Better to let them get comfortable before I show them who’s really the boss around here.”

Grinning, he sits at his desk and wakes his computer back up. “You did say _I’m_ going to be the one running this place someday, right?”

“You believe what you want to believe.”

“I’ll take that to heart.”

“See that you do,” she murmurs distractedly. “Which one’s yours?”

Harvey clears his throat. “I don’t see him.”

“Bullshit.” She glances at Harvey out of the corner of her eye. “You know I’m going to meet him eventually.”

“So savor the suspense.”

“So stop delaying the inevitable.”

“Harvey, have you ever heard of Aberdeen Solutions? I think they charge us a monthly management fee, but I can’t figure out what they actually _do._ ”

Well. He probably should’ve seen that one coming.

Donna grins voraciously, and Harvey briefly considers the mechanics of throwing himself out the window.

“Can I help you?” she asks as Mike looks up from the papers clutched in his hands.

“Uh— You must be Donna,” he fumbles, an impressive recovery if not a particularly elegant first impression.

Arching her eyebrows, she takes her time looking him up and down before turning back to Harvey. “I’m surprised you let him out of the house dressed like that.”

Harvey shakes his head remorsefully. “I can only do so much.”

“Well—to be fair,” Mike pipes up, “he can’t let me steal too much of his thunder.”

Donna purses her lips, deigning to grace him with her attention.

“Oh?”

Mike shrugs. “I mean, I’m already doing all his homework for him,” he says. “I’m pretty sure Jessica’s only keeping him around for his looks, I can’t take that away from him, too.”

“I have a picture of Dorian Grey in my closet,” Harvey deadpans as Donna grins.

“I like you.”

Mike smiles proudly and Harvey thinks he can see his life flashing before his eyes.

“I’ll look into Aberdeen,” he says loudly, reaching for the massive stack of papers Mike seems to have forgotten he’s holding. To Mike’s credit, he gives them up without a fight, but then Donna stands and puts her hand on his shoulder, and Harvey curses himself for not sending Mike off to spend the rest of the afternoon solving his problems for himself.

“You and I have so much to discuss,” Donna says, still grinning. “Let’s lunch, shall we?”

Looking back uncertainly, Mike lets himself be led to the door, and Harvey wants to reassure him, but practically speaking, there wouldn’t be much point to it.

Donna winks over her shoulder, and Harvey presses his hand to his suddenly aching forehead.

It’s okay. No, really. It was bound to happen sooner or later.

\---

“Hey Harvey,” Mike calls from his desk, a good fifteen feet away from Harvey’s. Wincing, Harvey does his best to project an aura of easy control over the enormous amount of work that seems to have filled his docket out of nowhere, the way such things tend to do.

“Were you raised in a barn?” he asks, keeping his eyes on his computer screen as Mike stands and ambles over.

“By wolves,” he says. “So, at lunch yesterday, Donna said you guys met when you were working at the DA’s office?”

The back of Harvey’s neck flushes, and he coughs into his fist as his mouth suddenly goes rather dry for no discernible reason.

“We did.”

“Yeah,” Mike says. “Did you know it’s not listed in your bio that you ever worked there?”

Ah. That explains that; maybe Harvey should give up on his burgeoning law career and pursue his true calling as the prophet of his own demise.

“Yeah,” he says. “I know.”

Mike frowns. “Why?”

Because I did things there that I’m not proud of. Because I was trapped in a game I didn’t know how to play. Because the very idea of the man I was then makes me sick and I’d do anything to go back and correct all of my mistakes except admit that they happened.

Harvey scowls.

Because the foundation might be rotten, but I’m trying to build myself into something better.

“Because it’s not.”

He doesn’t have to look at him to know that Mike wants to know more. He wants to press until it breaks, he’s dying to get to the bottom of this not-so-innocuous little oversight. To heal whatever’s hurting.

You can’t save everyone, kid. Better to learn that now before it’s too late.

Mike is desperate for more, but he’s a good man, and maybe he understands, because he turns and walks away.

Harvey nods to himself.

They’re getting by.

\---

“I didn’t know real people could be this _petty._ ”

Mike leans against the partition of Harvey’s cubicle and thumbs through a stack of printouts, and Harvey clears his throat, tapping his pen against the files spread before him as Mike looks up guilelessly.

“What?”

“I must have missed it when they repossessed your desk.”

Mike feigns a gasp, raising his free hand to his heart. “You mean you don’t treasure every moment we’re together? No,” he shoves the papers in Harvey’s face, “this guy just died, and he left his daughters his entire estate, and the only thing they’re doing is fighting over this goddamn tabloid they used to work on.”

The Price estate. Harvey’s familiar with the case.

“The longer they drag this out, the more money we get out of it.”

Mike snorts. “Your empathy is overwhelming.”

“Look,” Harvey says irately, “what exactly do you want me to do?”

“No, nothing,” Mike says, completely missing the hint. “Just, their dad is dead, and they’re getting hung up on this stupid rag because the most important thing to either one of them is that the other one is miserable.”

Harvey grimaces, his grip tightening around his pen.

“Maybe it’s more than a stupid rag to them.”

Mike sighs.

“I know,” he says softly, lowering his eyes as his face seems to darken. “I just… I mean, their dad just died. They could take a second to…mourn a little.”

Harvey hums an ambivalent note, making a point of focusing his attention on the disgracefully one-sided merger agreement he’s proofing for Jessica and reminding himself, not for the first time, not to get involved in the finer points of his coworkers’ personal lives.

Mike wanders back to his own desk at a weary trudge, and Harvey bites his tongue.

This job’s going to eat that poor kid alive.

\---

Mike shows up to work with a spring in his step that immediately puts Harvey on edge for reasons he can’t quite explain, maybe because of how diametrically opposite it is to his progressively dour mood of the past two weeks. No, he should be glad that Mike’s spirits have been so raised, regardless of the reason; no need to be suspicious.

“The hell are you so happy about?” he asks, shoving his briefcase off of his desk with all the grace and elegance to be expected of a Wednesday morning.

It’s not suspicion. More of a friendly curiosity.

Mike grins. “I solved the Price case.”

Well, at least it’s work-related. Jessica will be pleased with him.

“You’re bringing their dad back from the dead,” Harvey says.

Mike’s smile falters, his enthusiasm dimming a shade, and Harvey shakes his head and pretends not to have said anything.

“How?”

His smiles reappearing almost as quickly as it vanished, Mike hangs his bag over the back of his chair and invites himself over to Harvey’s desk, folding his arms on top of the cubicle partition and leaning in, the way he often does.

“Madison sells the tabloid to United International, so she gets rid of it without giving it to her sister,” he ticks off on his fingers, “and then Kelsey buys United International, so she _gets_ the tabloid without her sister _giving_ it to her.”

Interesting. It’s not a bad plan; technically within the bounds of the clients’ demands, slightly underhanded, affording both parties the opportunity to think they’re walking away with a win, and still with plenty of Mike’s trademark caring-about-other-people bullshit all over it. Harvey drums his fingers against his desk and nods approvingly.

“Madeline’s going along with that?”

“Madison,” Mike corrects. “I’m not sure Jessica told her the part about Kelsey buying United, but as long as they’re both happy, does it really matter?”

More than slightly underhanded, then. Harvey suddenly remembers Mike’s short-lived threat of blackmail at their very first meeting and quietly rearranges his opinions of him for about the thirtieth time.

“Fair enough,” he says as Mike preens.

“Thank you, thank you.”

“We’re going out to dinner.”

Mike freezes for a second.

“We’re what?”

Harvey sets about arranging the papers on his desk for the coming day, sorting the files into stacks of descending urgency and straightening his pens and color-coded packs of Post-It notes as he considers which restaurant might be most suitable for the coming evening.

“Dinner,” he repeats carelessly. “You and me. You nailed a big win, you’re my associate, I’ve gotta keep you properly motivated.”

Gradually, then quite suddenly, Mike breaks into a wide smile as Harvey tends to his busywork.

“Associates don’t have their own associates.”

Harvey smirks.

“This one does.”

Mike laughs.

\---

“Holy shit,” Mike blurts out as he opens his menu, hunching forward and looking up at Harvey with barely-disguised panic. “Would you look at these fucking _prices?_ ”

Harvey arches his eyebrows at the page. “Well I’ll be. I think this one’s pronounced ‘fifty nine ninety five.’”

“Dude,” Mike scoffs, tossing the menu down, “I’ve got bills to pay.”

“Don’t—”

“Right, right, sorry.” Mike rubs the back of his head. “Seriously, though, can we just go to a diner or something?”

Lowering his menu, Harvey looks up sedately. “When _you’re_ taking us out to celebrate _my_ win,” he says, “we can go to a diner.”

“You’d never speak to me again, though, right?”

“Absolutely not.” Harvey looks back down and eyes the selection of steaks. “What are you so worried about? I know how much you’re making, you can afford this.”

Picking at the front cover of his menu, Mike peeks warily underneath.

“You know how I said I need this job?”

Harvey hums. “I believe your exact words were, ‘Please, Mister Specter, please help me cover up this B-felony.’”

“You think you’re a lot funnier than you are.” Mike opens his menu again and turns his attention to the appetizers. “My grandmother lives in a nursing home, and I have to keep up with her bills or they’ll ship her off to a state institution.”

Settling on the rib eye, Harvey puts his menu back down and opens the wine list instead.

“Your parents lost the custody battle?”

Mike coughs a scornful laugh. “My parents, are dead.”

Ah.

Harvey raises his hand to wipe his mouth and pretends he hasn’t just stuck his foot farther into it than he’s ever managed to do before. No wonder Mike wanted the Price sisters to take the time to mourn their father, no wonder he was so terrified when his dumbass roommate snuck that pot into his briefcase. Fuck, no wonder Mike was willing to do all of Kline’s work for him, no wonder he never stands up for himself when Mister High School Debate Champ tries to get under his skin.

Harvey takes a drink of water.

“Look,” Mike says, “I appreciate the thought, but I don’t belong here, okay? Why don’t you get your wagyu tartar or whatever and I’ll just have a side of onion rings.”

Harvey puts the wine list off to the side and drapes his napkin across his lap.

“Look,” he retorts. “You handed Jessica the win on the Price suit and I’m taking you out to celebrate, okay? Why don’t you just shut up and order something you actually want to eat.”

Pausing a moment, Mike smiles wearily, his eyes dropping to his place setting and his fingers fumbling with the tablecloth. A waiter appears out of nowhere, smiling brightly as Harvey speaks over Mike’s objections that the Cabernet Sauvignon is a step too far, and takes their bread plates when she goes.

Mike takes a gulp of water and sets the glass down with a soft thump.

“My parents died when I was eleven.”

Oh, so that’s how this is gonna go, huh?

Harvey rests his hands in his lap, and Mike sighs.

“We had a big fight one night,” he says in a detached sort of way, like he’s told this story before, but maybe not for awhile. “I was yelling at them about—some stupid shit, and they went out for dinner, and…they didn’t come back.”

“I’m sorry,” is what people are supposed to say in this situation. “I’m sorry for your loss.” Something like that.

Harvey nods silently.

“They were t-boned by a drunk driver,” Mike goes on as he gets his second wind. “Mister Fenton. Fenton’s lawyer knew we had a case, so he rushed to settle with my grandmother two days later, before she could figure out what was going on, and a few years later, I found out what had happened, and…that’s when I decided to become a lawyer.”

Harvey nods some more.

“You didn’t want anyone else to land in that situation,” he says.

Mike smiles a little. “Yeah. And I never wanted to feel that helpless again.”

Harvey stops nodding.

“You’re studying law to protect yourself.”

Mike laughs sharply. “Yeah,” he says, “I guess I am.”

Harvey runs his fingertips along the edge of the table.

We’re the same, you and I. We both know what it’s like to lose a parent to forces beyond our control; we both know that helplessness, that fear that it’ll happen again, that knowledge that we should’ve done more than we did to stop it before it happened the first time. All those childish regrets, I’ve felt them, too.

He could say any of those things.

“That’s…very noble of you.”

He could say all of those things.

Maybe someday.

\---

Somehow, in some way Harvey will never fully understand, the winter flu season of 2004 that knocks about three quarters of the associates out of the Petri dish that is the bullpen for a full week leaves both Mike and himself relatively unscathed.

Or so he thought.

Two weeks after the associates begin forcing themselves back into the office, the amount of overtime he pulled and the additional work he took on to compensate for the dearth of labor finally catches up with Mike in the form of possibly the worst cold Harvey has ever had the misfortune to witness in real life, and even if he could summon the strength to drag himself from his apartment, much less into the office, Harvey suspects Jessica would send him home the moment she caught sight of him. Which is fine; it’s good that Mike is getting some rest, it’s good that he isn’t bringing his germ-infested self around the rest of them to spread his disease. It’s good that he isn’t putting Harvey in the line of fire.

Though Harvey did sort of overlook the fact that dominating the other associates and keeping on top of his workload is a lot more difficult than he remembers when he’s trying to pull it off all by himself.

“So you’ll be in on Monday?”

Walking by Harvey’s desk, Louis gives him a peculiar look that Harvey returns with a petulant sneer as Mike tries to smother another hacking cough.

“I hope so,” he mutters. “You got any contracts for me to proof before then?”

Harvey eyes the mountain of paperwork in his inbox.

“You kidding?” he asks, pushing his chair back from his desk. “This week’s been so light I wouldn’t be surprised if they decide to cut you loose as soon as you come back.”

“Oh, yeah,” Mike says with a smug hint of amusement, “that totally explains why you called me in the middle of the afternoon.”

“To make sure you’ll be ready when Jessica dumps the lawsuit for the Swinton merger on me and I dump it on you.”

Mike laughs for about a second before he starts coughing again.

“Jesus, Mike,” Harvey holds the phone away from his ear, “drink some water and go back to bed.”

Mike sniffles.

“I’m so _bored._ Are you sure you don’t have anything you can give me?”

“I’ll give you a goddamn sedative if you don’t get some sleep.”

Mike laughs again.

“Yeah, yeah. Hey,” he says feebly, “thanks for calling.”

“No problem. Go back to bed.”

Mike sighs loudly. “But I don’t _wanna._ ”

“Don’t make me come over there.”

“Alright, alright, geez, I’m going.”

Harvey smirks, listening to the shuffle of Mike’s socked feet slipping across the floor and his comforter being pulled this way and that around his bed.

“There. Happy?”

“Yes. See you Monday.”

Mike hangs up in lieu of a proper farewell, and Harvey settles his phone back in its cradle and turns his attention, yet again, to the towering inferno that is his inbox.

Harvey sighs.

God damn, he’s getting soft.

\---

It’s not unusual for Mike’s desk to be overrun with documents and folders an other legal bric-à-brac. If Harvey swooped in and made a fuss every time he feared Mike was about to build himself a house of contracts and briefs and move into the office permanently, he’d never get anything done.

Something about today is just a little bit off, that’s all.

Mike _should_ be swamped right now—Harvey knows this on account of the fact that he handed him most of the discovery documentation for the Danner case, a wrongful imprisonment thing with enough “recently uncovered” evidence to keep any normal human person busy for at least a month—except that at the moment, he seems to be combing through a pile of 966 forms, and Harvey hasn’t looked at the discovery documents himself, but he’s willing to bet that Danner, imprisoned six years ago at the tender age of eighteen, has never had the opportunity to take part in any corporate dissolution or liquidation that might require Mike’s attention.

Given the limited number of methods available to him to get to the bottom of the situation in a timely manner, Harvey elects to be as direct as possible.

“What the hell is this?”

Mike scribbles something on the notepad by his elbow. “A drive-in movie,” he mumbles.

“Cute.” Harvey leans over to inspect a pile of papers Mike seems to have finished with. “Is this for Jessica?”

“Nope.” Mike slaps the paper in front of him onto the pile under Harvey’s nose. “Louis.”

Harvey frowns deeply.

“Why the hell are you doing work for Louis?”

“Because he asked me?” Mike circles something in orange highlighter. “He’s got a point, too, you’re awesome at mergers and acquisitions but if I want to be well-rounded enough to be indispensable to the firm, I’ve gotta get some experience in financial law.”

Glowering bitterly, Harvey scans the bullpen until he finds Louis, leaning over the shoulder of another of the rookie associates and jabbing his finger in the poor kid’s terrified baby face.

“Is that so,” he mutters.

“Yeah.” Mike looks up at him. “It’s fine, I mean, it’s for my own good.”

“Mike,” he says, keeping his eyes fixed on Louis, “you want to make yourself indispensable to this firm? Forget this jack-of-all-trades crap, alright, you find the thing you’re best at and you get so good at it that giving you up would be like cutting off their own arm.”

“Colorful.” Mike adds another page to the pile. “Really, it’s fine, I don’t mind.”

“You might not,” Harvey growls, already stalking out of Mike’s cubicle, “but I do.”

“Harvey—”

“Hey!”

Louis jerks upright like he’s been electrocuted, and Harvey can’t tell whether the kid he’s talking to is more frightened of him or relieved at the interruption.

Not important.

“Harvey,” Louis says, “can’t you see I’m busy molding this fragile young mind?”

“I don’t give a shit,” Harvey snaps. “What the hell do you think you’re doing?”

Louis looks down at the anonymous associate and then back at Harvey, tilting his head slightly. “Educating Howard in the finer points of contract law, what does it look like I’m doing?”

“Um, it’s, it’s Harold?”

“That’s what I said.”

“Look,” Harvey seethes, jabbing his finger in Louis’s face and glaring right into his eyes. “Mike is _my_ associate. You want someone to clean up after your goddamn mistakes, you find someone else, got it?”

Louis glares right back, puffing his chest up in an effort to counter Harvey’s considerable height advantage. “I’m not afraid of you, Harvey.”

Harvey laughs darkly. “Oh,” he says, “you think I don’t know where you hide your dirty laundry? You don’t back off, I’ll have you out on the street faster than you can _blink._ ”

“This is harassment, I could report you to HR.”

“Try me.”

“I could report you to Jessica.”

“ _Try me._ ”

Louis puts in approximately three seconds’ worth of effort coming up with another retort before he realizes it’s not worth the trouble, setting his hands on his hips and sneering as though Harvey hasn’t just boxed him into a corner.

“Don’t come crying to me the next time Jessica assigns you a financial suit,” he says, turning and swanning off back to his own desk like a goddamn regency dramatist as Harold looks anxiously between them.

Harvey watches him go, a hair’s breadth from baring his teeth and outright snarling. By the time he’s turned to storm back to his own cubicle, Mike has carefully pushed the 966 forms to the edge of his desk and begun poring over a file with the words “DANNER – Official Transcripts 1995-99” scrawled across the front.

Good.

\---

The coming weekend certainly isn’t the first that Mike has had to spend working overtime, but to the best of Harvey’s recollection, this is the first time he’s complained about it so voraciously, or perhaps at all. In fairness, he does have an excuse, sort of, in that he evidently made plans some time ago to visit his grandmother at her nursing home, but Harvey’s reasonably sure that the sooner Mike figures out how to balance his work life with his personal one, and the sooner he learns that the firm _always_ comes first, the better off he’ll be. He’s already well on his way; for all his bitching and moaning, of which there’s really very little, Mike always gets his work done, and he does a good job of it.

So when he doesn’t show up Saturday morning by six thirty, or seven, or eight, or ever, Harvey’s first thought is that he must have finished everything he wanted to get done on Friday and merely forgotten to mention it.

His second is that something has gone terribly, drastically wrong.

His third is that the truth of the matter probably lies somewhere in between. More than likely, Mike made enough progress during the week to be able to afford to take the weekend for himself, and he’s probably at the nursing home right now having a grand old time. Whatever’s going on, it’s none of Harvey’s concern; he really does have more pressing matters to attend to, especially if he doesn’t want to be back at work again tomorrow, and he can’t afford the distraction.

Except that Mike doesn’t show up Monday morning until seven twenty-three, and when he does, he’s ridiculously high-strung, panicking every time the phone rings, and that’s just annoying, is what it is.

The instant the clock strikes five, Harvey stands from his desk and shrugs on his coat.

“Come on,” he says as he steps out of his cubicle. “Time to go.”

Everyone keeps working as though he hasn’t said a word, and it takes a moment for Mike to realize he’s being spoken to.

“What?” he stutters. “I can’t, I’ve got—deliverables, and I have to finish—”

“You have to get the hell out of here, is what you have to do,” Harvey interrupts, grabbing Mike by the elbow and hauling him out of his chair. “You and I are going back to my place and you’re going to tell me what’s going on with you, and we’re going to fix it, and you’re going to calm the fuck down, you got that?”

Mike stares at him nervously, and Harvey rolls his eyes.

“Get your shit together and meet me downstairs in five.”

Nodding, Mike falls back into his seat as Harvey stalks off to the elevators. He follows him down six minutes later, and Harvey makes a point of pretending to check the watch he isn’t wearing.

“You’re late.”

Mike runs his hand through his hair, laughing under his breath. “Sorry.”

“No you’re not.”

Mike shrugs.

Never mind. There’ll be time enough for that later.

“Come on,” Harvey says, setting his hand between Mike’s shoulder blades and directing him toward the doors. “My driver’s waiting outside.”

“You have a driver?” Mike says, as is required by such an announcement. Harvey smiles haughtily, as might be expected of a man in his position.

“Damn right I do.”

Mike doesn’t seem to hear him.

That’s alright. It’s not really important.

Ray holds the back door of his town car open for Harvey to push Mike inside and slide in after. The ride to Harvey’s condo takes a little over half an hour, on account of traffic, and they spend it as far apart as two people sitting on the same bench seat can possibly get.

Ray only looks a little bit concerned when he drops them off. Harvey assures him it’ll be fine.

“Oh,” Mike says when Harvey opens his front door. “You’ve got a sweet place.”

Harvey shoves him inside and slams the door behind them.

“What happened?”

Mike bites his lip and looks at a point over Harvey’s shoulder.

“And don’t tell me it’s nothing,” Harvey says, “because I know you don’t think I’m stupid enough to fall for that.”

Mike smiles like he doesn’t mean it.

“It’s not a big deal.”

“For god’s sake…”

“It’s not,” he insists, following Harvey inside to the kitchen. “It’s _not,_ I _swear._ ”

“Then why won’t you tell me what it _is?_ ” Harvey snaps as he yanks the refrigerator open, grabbing a bottle of IPA and throwing it shut again.

“Because it’s nothing!”

“Mike!” Harvey slams his beer against the granite countertop, staring into Mike’s eyes and doing his best to keep from shoving him up against the wall. “Tell me what the fuck is going on!”

“I—”

“Mike!”

“My grandmother had a heart attack, okay!”

Oh.

Well…

Oh.

Harvey falls back a step as Mike breathes heavily, his shoulders drooping like he can’t be bothered to hold himself upright anymore.

“Okay.”

Mike spits a breath between his teeth, and Harvey gropes blindly for his beer.

“Yeah.”

The idea of drinking anything, of tasting the bitter alcohol and actually enjoying it, is suddenly so foreign that it makes Harvey sick, nausea roiling in his stomach as he sets the beer back down on the counter.

Mike sighs.

“She’s not dead,” he says spitefully, as though he knows what Harvey must have been thinking, as though he’s an idiot for having thought it. “The doctor called it a ‘cardiac event.’”

Harvey picks his beer up and puts it back in the refrigerator.

“She back at home?”

Mike laughs sharply. “You don’t know anyone who’s ever had a heart attack before, do you?”

Harvey holds his breath a second to keep from saying something he shouldn’t. He’s the one who pushed, he’s the one who brought them here, now; he knew something was wrong, he knew Mike was hurting. He should have known what was coming.

“No,” he says, “I don’t.”

“Yeah, well.” Mike thumps the side of his fist against the top of the stove. “She’s in the telemetry unit until tomorrow. Unless something else goes wrong, then who fucking knows.”

Briefly, Harvey considers asking what the telemetry unit is, but if Mike knows, he probably doesn’t want to talk about it.

There were probably better ways to go about this.

“What can I do?”

He expects Mike to laugh again, to make some scornful remark about how useless Harvey is, how there’s nothing anyone can do, and he should know that, why doesn’t he knows that?

Mike doesn’t.

Mike doesn’t really do much of anything but lean against the stove and close his eyes, and Harvey knows, suddenly and without question, that right now, in this moment, he’ll give Mike anything he wants. Whatever he asks for, Harvey will do it, because Mike needs him, and Harvey Specter looks out for his own.

Mike puts his hand over his face and sighs.

“Shit,” he mutters. “I’m sorry.”

Don’t. Please don’t.

Harvey turns to look out the window. There are so many things he could say.

Right now. He could do it.

“My dad used to be a saxophone player,” he says. “Everybody loved him, he played with everybody you could think of. And he was always happy to do it, no matter what, because he believes music is about love, and he’s always believed in love.”

Mike sniffles and clears his throat. “You trying to tell me something?”

Harvey smirks. “Don’t be an asshole, I’m trying to tell you a story.”

Crossing his arms over his chest, Mike shakes his head, smiling a little. It’s not much of an encouragement, as these things go, but it’s enough for now.

Harvey takes a shallow breath.

“My mom was a groupie,” he says. “My dad says he fell in love with her at first sight, and they got married six months later.”

He pauses, a strange sort of wistfulness lightening his heart, and Mike moves closer to the windows to look out at the view.

“Sounds nice,” he says quietly.

Doesn’t it though?

Harvey puts his hands in his pockets.

“I was sixteen when I caught her cheating.”

Mike nods as though he saw it coming, but how could he? No one could. No one did. Harvey waits for him to say the usual things, “I’m sorry” or “That’s terrible” or something like that, but he only keeps nodding, and Harvey doesn’t know for sure, but he thinks that’s probably better.

“I didn’t tell my dad,” he says. “I think I was afraid of what would happen, or what he’d do, and then two years went by while she just went right on making him a fool, and the whole time, I kept thinking…”

You know. The way I’m feeling, you feel it, too.

“What should I have done different?”

Harvey shifts his weight back onto his heels and takes a deep breath, as though he can taste the night air through the glass, as though it might smell like the countryside, or the ocean. Somewhere pleasant that people go on vacation to get away from their lives for awhile.

What could I have done?

Why did it have to be me?

Mike rubs his cheek as though to wipe away a tear, and it’s dark and hard to see, but Harvey is pretty sure he hasn’t actually been crying. Or maybe he has. It doesn’t matter.

“Nothing,” Harvey says. “There was nothing anyone could’ve done.”

“Oh,” Mike says thickly, rubbing his eye again. “Yeah, okay, thanks.”

Harvey smiles. “You’re taking care of her, you’re doing the best you can. It’s hard, and things don’t always go the way you want, but you’re trying, and I think you’re doing a damn fine job.”

Mike sniffles. “Yeah?”

“I think she’s lucky to have you.”

So how about that.

They stand at the window and look out over the city, pinned to the indigo-colored sky on the other side of the glass, and watch the lights across the river turn on and off, change from red to green.

“Hey,” Mike murmurs, “can I just… Can I stay here tonight?”

Well, of course. Of course. What a silly question that is.

“Yeah.” Harvey steps backwards, toward the hall. “Guest room’s right here.”

Mike smiles weakly.

“Thanks.”

Harvey nods.

“I’m gonna order some dinner,” he says, for lack of something better. “You in the mood for pizza?”

Pressing the heel of his palm to his eye, Mike laughs, and Harvey is pretty sure he’s given up on trying not to cry.

“Yeah,” he says. “Always.”

As Mike collapses on the couch, Harvey returns to the kitchen to rifle through the drawer where he keeps his menus and various other miscellany for the number of that one place he ordered from awhile ago that he can’t remember the name of, but he thinks did a pretty good pepperoni and mushroom. The subtle hum of the television set to some absurdly low volume reaches his ear as he considers ordering cheese in the crust; but never mind. This place doesn’t offer it.

Sounds like Mike’s watching something with a pretty bass-heavy soundtrack.

“You like pepperoni?”

The television goes silent.

“Yeah, sure.”

He’ll get mushrooms on half.

He crosses to the living room, and Mike moves over to the left side of the couch, even though there’s already plenty of room for both of them. Harvey sits on the middle cushion and looks up at the television on mute as Tom Hanks pulls himself through a plastic tube at zero-g in search of some duct tape or something. It’s a funny thing, watching a frantic scene like this without sound; everything seems much less important. Kind of silly.

“This is stupid,” Mike says.

Harvey reaches for the remote on the coffee table and turns the television off.

“These things happen all the time,” he goes on, making stilted gestures in the air that sort of match up with what he’s saying. “They caught it right away, she went right to the hospital, the doctors said she’s doing okay, she’s gonna be fine, this is _stupid._ ”

Harvey turns toward him and leans against the backrest.

“She’s gonna be _fine,_ ” Mike says. “This is so _stupid,_ I’m acting like such an _idiot._ ”

He backhands the cushions, glaring ahead at some indistinct point in between them and breathing heavily as color rises in his cheeks.

“Everything is going to be _fine._ ”

It’s hard to tell if he’s trying to console himself, or convince himself.

Harvey props his temple against his fist.

“You know, it’s okay if you’re scared.”

“No!” Mike shouts, shoving himself to his feet, hunching his shoulders and taking up too much space. “It’s not! Because all anyone’s said is not to worry, that she’ll be fine, that everything’s gonna be okay, but that’s what they thought _before,_ and then— And—”

He bites his lip and fumbles for his words, and Harvey looks up at him.

“Mike,” he says, “tomorrow—”

“Shut _up!_ ”

Mike takes a heaving breath, pressing his fists to his eyes.

A moment passes, and then another. Then another.

Mike sobs into his hands. Then again.

Slowly, Harvey stands; carefully, he lays his hand on Mike’s shoulder. These times are hard, and they’re not going to get any easier, but Mike sure as hell doesn’t have to go through them alone. Not if he has anything to say about it.

“Tomorrow,” he says, “you should go visit her.”

Mike laughs.

“I can’t,” he says. “I can barely pay the nursing home fees, and now there’s gonna be this—medical bill, I can’t just…not go to work.”

“Billable hours,” Harvey says. “Charge the hospital, if you want, or the nursing home.”

“I can’t—”

“I’ll pay for it.”

Mike shakes his head.

“Harvey,” he says, like he’s trying the name out for the first time. “I can’t—”

“You’re not asking,” Harvey interrupts. “I’m offering. And you’re not taking it, I’m giving it to you. And any other reasons you’re gonna come up with, how about you keep them to yourself, because I’m telling you, I’ll take care of it.”

Mike smiles weakly, and Harvey smiles back.

It’s going to be okay. Everything is going to be alright.

“Okay?”

Mike nods like he almost believes it.

“Yeah,” he says. “Okay.”

Clapping him on the shoulder, Harvey goes back to his seat on the couch. “You wanna finish this movie?” he asks. “I haven’t seen it since I was a kid, I forget how it ends.”

Mike sits beside him, and Harvey knows he doesn’t really believe that. Not that he should.

“Gentlemen,” Tom Hanks says, “it’s been a pleasure flying with you.”

Harvey grins. “I always liked this part,” he says. “The only way to win the game was to rewrite the rules, and now they have to wait and see if they pulled it off.”

Out of the corner of his eye, he glances over at Mike, who’s only kind of paying attention to the television screen.

“Mike?”

Mike has a funny sort of look in his eye, like he’s thinking about something he can’t talk about until he’s finished figuring it out. Harvey puts the television back on mute.

“You okay?” he says softly.

Mike sits a little bit closer.

Okay.

How long has this been coming after them? How long have they been building up to it, was it since the very start? The second day, or the third?

Harvey tilts his head a little bit to the left.

They’re here now, is the important part.

Mike is the one to lean in, to cross the space between them, but Harvey’s the one to raise his hand to the back of Mike’s neck, to cradle his head in his hand and pull them closer together. Harvey closes his eyes, holding on tight, shifting himself into place when Mike slides his arms around his shoulders.

Later, however long it is before they come apart, Harvey opens his eyes as Mike rests their foreheads together and breathes his labored breaths. He smiles, a little morosely, and opens his eyes, too.

“Thank you.”

Harvey presses his fingertips to Mike’s back.

“Yeah.”

Sooner or later, everything’s gonna be alright, and when it is, we’ll still be here.

\---

Holding his shoes in his hand, Harvey walks carefully down the hall, inching toward the front door. The door to the guest room is still open, and he takes a small detour to the living room, craning his neck to look over the back of the couch where Mike is tucked in against the armrest, clutching a throw pillow under his head.

Harvey smiles.

Today’s going to be a long day for both of them; but they’ll get to the end, and then it’ll be tomorrow, and they can go from there. They’ve got time.

In the kitchen, Harvey opens the drawer of menus and other miscellany and pulls out a pen.

 _You got this,_ he writes next to a list of pizza toppings. _Tell her I said hi._

Capping the pen, he takes it back off almost immediately and scrawls along the bottom edge of the pamphlet:

_You can stay as long as you want._

He shoves the pen back into the drawer and slides the paper to the edge of the counter.

They’ll figure it out; they’re already on their way to the top of the mountain. Their rightful places on the throne.

They’re gonna be great.

**Author's Note:**

> “Look, I have to put my own interests above yours. It’s nothing personal. You’re fired.”  
> “Wait. So you’re worried that if I stay, then they might find out that you lied about me and you’ll lose your license. But if you fire me, then I could tell them that you lied about me and you’d definitely lose your license.”  
> “Are you telling me that if I throw you under the bus, you’re going to drag me with you?”  
> “But you put your interests above mine. I mean, I’m just putting mine back up next to yours.”  
> “You’re rehired.”  
> —Harvey and Mike, “Pilot” (s01e01)
> 
> “Oh. Oh, you’ve got a sweet place, dude.”  
> “Don’t ever call me ‘dude.’”  
> —Mike and Harvey, “Tricks of the Trade” (s01e06)
> 
> “Yeah, baby, Butch and Sundance are back!”  
> —Mike, “Unfinished Business” (s03e03)
> 
> “You know when we were in the bullpen, Harvey was like…Superman?”  
> “I get it. He’s alone. Always has been, always will be.”  
> “Always was. Harvey is not Superman anymore. He’s Batman. And Batman needs Robin.”  
> —Louis and Mike, “The Arrangement” (s03e01)
> 
> “Did you get through all those files in one night?”  
> “I would have done it faster, but I ordered a pizza. Speaking of which, have you ever had the cheese in the crust? Because it blew my mind.”  
> —Harvey and Mike, “Pilot”
> 
> “I have a picture of Dorian Grey in my closet.”  
> “It’s not funny.”  
> —Harvey and Mike, “Stay” (s03e10)
> 
> “When I was 11, my parents were on their way home from dinner, and they were involved in a really horrible accident. And, uh, they— My grandmother took me in. And it wasn’t until I was much older that I realized that we had a case. See, it turns out this restaurant, they kept feeding this Mr. Fenton drinks long after they knew— Didn’t matter. I just I felt so helpless. And I didn’t want to feel that way ever again.”  
> —Mike, “She Knows” (s02e01)
> 
> “What the hell is this, a drive-in movie?”  
> —Sheriff Buford T. Justice, _Smokey and the Bandit_ (1977)
> 
> EOD: End of Day
> 
> [Boehringer Ingelheim](https://www.boehringer-ingelheim.com/) is a global, Germany-based pharmaceutical company.
> 
> Ed Deepneau is one of several insomniac characters in Stephen King’s novel _Insomnia_ (1994).
> 
> The Devlin McGregor case takes place during “Pilot.” Jones Debeque is one of Harvey and Mike’s clients in “Play the Man” (s01e07). Aberdeen Solutions is the name of the fictional company used by Dreibach Solutions in “Shelf Life” (s01e10) to scam Pearson Hardman and other clients. It comes up that Harvey used to work at the DA’s office, and that his Pearson Hardman bio doesn’t mention his time there, in “Rules of the Game” (s01e11). Harvey and Mike work on the Swinton Merger in “She Knows.” Harvey focuses on getting Clifford Danner out of prison in “Dog Fight” (s01e12).
> 
> In “Rules of the Game,” Mike and Louis have a whole double-crossing back and forth about the Price estate that does eventually resolve in Kelsey Price buying United International after they’ve acquired the tabloid she and Madison have been fighting over, albeit for a price that leaves her deeply in debt; in the scenario here, being that Louis is also an associate and likely not involved, I figure the plan goes off without a hitch (although Mike probably doesn’t get any of the credit).
> 
> Harvey takes Mike to dinner at [Benjamin Steakhouse Prime](https://www.benjaminsteakhouse.com/prime/our-menus/), which is a steakhouse close to 601 Lexington Avenue (i.e., Pearson Hardman). Benjamin Prime steaks range from $57.95 (New York sirloin) to $64.95 (rib eye), which is actually not an outrageous amount for a decent steakhouse.
> 
> Both of Harvey’s parents will eventually die of heart attacks, but Gordon doesn’t die until 2007 and this story takes place in 2004-05.
> 
> The movie on TV is _Apollo 13_ (1995) and there is no way Harvey doesn’t remember how it ends.
> 
> Feel free to say hi on [tumblr](https://statusquoergo.tumblr.com)!


End file.
